What Does Mark 7:12 Mean?
And you no longer let him go to do anything for his father or his mother.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother;THE KEY
The Greek word translated “suffer” belongs to a release-word family, so the verse shows a sacred rule being used to withhold a son’s care from his parents.
THE MEANING
This verse names what happens when a sacred claim closes off the care a parent needs: the child is no longer permitted to do anything for father or mother. The religious boundary remains in force while ordinary care is shut out.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The false belief is that declaring resources sacred makes withholding them from one’s parents harmless.
THE ROOT
ἀφίετε
aphiete
GROWS FROM
ἵημι (hiēmi), in the compound ἀφίημι (aphiēmi)
Send or let go; with ἀπό (apo, away), send away or release. The verb can also mean leave, forgive, or permit.
“no longer let him go” in this verse is aphiete. English “suffer” here means permit, while this Greek word family also carries the sense of releasing or leaving. Permission is the hinge: the son is prevented from acting for his father or mother.
ALSO GROWS
aphesis: release, remission, or forgiveness
ἄφεσις
This noun appears as “deliverance” in Luke 4:18, showing the family’s release sense alongside Mark’s sense of permission.
aphienai: to release, leave, or permit
ἀφιέναι
This infinitive form carries the same range of letting go and allowing, illuminating how Mark’s “suffer” means permitting the son to act.
THE PATTERN
A claim to reverence does not cancel the concrete duty of caring for parents.
Give weight to your father and your mother, that your days may lengthen upon the ground which the LORD your God gives you.Hear and respond to your father, who begets you, and do not scorn your mother when she is old.THE THREAD
The breath of the LORD is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the emptied. He has sent me to heal the shattered in heart, to herald release to the captives, and the return of sight for the blind, to send the crushed away into release.“Deliverance” translates ἄφεσις (aphesis), meaning release, from the same Greek word family as ἀφίετε (aphiete), “permit,” in Mark. Luke speaks of release given; Mark shows permission withheld from a son trying to care for his parents.
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